A Hardy Developer's Journal

Franko stands in the pale moonlight unaware of what awaits him

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Jarosław Kuczek

Set in 2099 Shanghai Butterfly is an independent cyberpunk adventure game to be released as freeware Winter 2009. It’s an ambitious project with striking graphics and many of the cyberpunk genre’s more hardcore staples. The author of the game Jarosław Kuczek – passionate about android-related projects and the constantly evolving technology, with experiences of such vastly different cultures like Polish, Japanese and Chinese – promises to deliver much more than a traditional adventure game with a few sci-fi gimmicks. Below is everything he told us about his project – from its origins to major attractions – coupled with general thoughts about sci-fi and adventure gaming. (more…)

Finally, there has come the moment that I was waiting for a very long time – I can start a production diary for my own adventure game! Not because I have just put together a loose concept or created the first artwork, no. It is the right moment to begin writing about the game because I have now finished a working version of one of three acts of the full project – to be tweaked and released soon (next month) as a WIP demo. So, while much much work still needs to be done, even on the demo, from this moment on there will be always  some solid virtual entity to refer to. In other words, Frantic Franko now lives! (more…)

I’m a bit behind the schedule with some things that I announced at various places to various people to appear on the blog, so to keep the hopes up I decided to write a quick round-up of what is coming for sure. And soon. In the worst scenario I may not make it before May with everything. Also, in May someone should come to help me with the writing in general, so I expect the number of updates to jump up as well. Anyway, back to April.  Here are the current contenders in no particular order:

1) One of the main reasons I have less time to write new articles now (and sadly this trend will continue) is that I spend lots of it on making an adventure game. On my very own. And I want it to be finished in a decent amount of time too. I already have a working demo with a big chunk of the game. It is currently undergoing some (well, lots actually) polishing processes and I hope to release released sometime in May. In the meantime, I will publish the first entries in a production diary for the game, which will bring you more (lots more) details, as well as some artwork and screenshots.

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Action games’ fans often consider adventure games’ fans as eccentric people who like to think hard during their leisure, when, as everybody else knows, it’s time to release all the primal emotions suppressed during the rest of the day. But that just shows how unaware they are about some of the main ingredients that constitute a true adventure gaming experience: instant dangers, hidden traps, fist fights, explosions, running away from angry mobs… So what if many obstacles standing in the way demand the usage of some basic wits to get past – it’s there just to spice up the adventure. (more…)